In a telecommunications network, “call routing” or “call forwarding” refers to a calling feature that allows a telephone user to have incoming calls routed to an alternate phone number based on certain predefined user-specified rules. For example, a person may elect to have all calls to a first phone number (e.g., a home phone number) routed to a second phone number (e.g., a work phone number) during the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm. Some existing implementations of call routing or forwarding features require the user (i.e., the called party) to manually update or change the call routing rules to reflect modifications in the user's schedule. By way of illustration, if the person in the prior example will not be present at work at some point during the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm on a given day and still wants to receive calls to the user's home or work phone numbers, the person will need to update the call routing rules to specify a third phone number (e.g., a cell phone number) to which the incoming calls are to routed.
Another example of a call routing feature is sometimes referred to as a “find-me/follow-me” feature. In this type of feature, generally implemented in a Voice over IP portion of a telecommunications network, calls placed to a user may be routed to one of a number of network terminals depending upon which terminal the user is currently logged-in to. For example, the user may associate a phone number or user name with multiple network addresses, each corresponding to a different network terminal (e.g. home computer, work computer, mobile device, etc.) and a call routing application may be configured to determine which of the terminals the user is logged-in to and to route calls to that terminal. In these types of systems, the called party is required to manually provide an indication of the location to which a call is to be routed at a given time, e.g., by logging-in to a network terminal.
Therefore, what is needed is a more efficient implementation of a contact routing feature that can automatically (i.e., without manual user interaction) be adjusted based on the location of the contacted party.